Lugubrious

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (195/140) Lvl 7 Sandalphon (92/70) Lvl 4 Grimm (45/40)
Junior, & Rika’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 3195 (+4x2)

For the second time the nightmarish pocket dimension of flesh and sacrifice receded from Nadia’s view. The next moment, the Final Hollow faded back in around her and the other Seekers, leaving the team one more ally short. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any easier for the feral to compose herself this time; if anything, she felt number than before. The decision paralysis inflicted on her and the others by A’s meatspace was wearing off, and the cold fear with which her phagophobia gripped her spine had diminished, but the loss of Goldlewis Dickinson was a weight she’d be carrying for a while.

“Damn it, old man,” she muttered bitterly. Sure, at the end of the day she hadn’t know him that well either, but how many more times would she have to console herself in such a way? As someone made mostly immortal by the power of the Life Gem, it would be her lot in life to outlive most everyone she met. That meant losses were inevitable, but while Nadia knew she couldn’t let such things drive her to despondency, she also knew that she couldn’t harden her heart to said losses, either. Having lost so much already, Nadia had taken to heart an important lesson: that the inevitability of loss wasn’t a reason to give up on life, love, or laughter, but instead the reason to live, laugh, and love all the more. In the short time she’d known Goldlewis, he’d proven himself to be one of the strongest, most stout-hearted old warriors she’d ever seen. He had not thrown his life away for nothing, but had nobly faced his own death without fear for the sake of saving everybody. Nadia felt guilty, for lacking that courage herself and forcing the veteran’s hand, but also grateful for the extra chance he’d given her. She would not waste it.

“Badass to the end, huh?” Nadia found herself looking upward, past the twisted, throbbing horrors of the floodfested demon tree and into the clear blue sky. Against such a backdrop, even the Brother Moon looked small, somehow. “Well, you can rest easy. We won’t letcha down.”

The next moment, Nadia’s ears twitched, and on instinct the feral sprang backward. A blazing meteor slammed into the floor where she’d been standing a split second earlier, close enough that she could feel its searing heat on her skin and eyes as her hair fluttered from the displaced air. Blown further back by the shockwave, she used the momentum to twist herself around in a backflip and land in a crouched stance on her feet. Her claws raked across the flattened Qliphoth bark of the floor as she slid to a stop, her lips curled over bare teeth. Above the battlefield hovered Moebius D, a fresh batch of spells already on their way after Pit’s shimmery shield took the brunt of the last one. In the wake of the second Come Unto Your Maker, the vampiric Consul had taken advantage of the emotional fallout to try and rack up a few more kills of his own, but now Nadia’s blood was boiling a lot hotter than his meteors.

Another round of violently purple rays streaked toward the Seekers below. Nadia took off with a dash propelled by jets of high-pressure blood, then sprinted on all fours in a frenetic strafing run. As the magic curved toward her she zig-zagged back and forth, changing her direction at the last second to confound the arcane beams’ homing abilities. “Such wanton D-struction!” By the time the barrage ended, though, whirling sickles of flame were on their way. Only after weaving through the fiery pinwheels did Nadia realize that she’d been corralled against a thick curtain of blood rain as huge fireballs plummeted toward her. Thinking quickly, Nadia used Charge to bolt through the crimson deluge, only a little worse for wear while a cacophonous chain-explosion demolished the area where she’d been. “Hah! Sorry to rain on your parade, but it’ll take something a bit ‘meteor’ than that to get me!”

Despite her jokes, Nadia was definitely annoyed, and not just because she heard Juri gloating about killing Moebius O. There were no gaps in D’s offense in which her team could fight back, and even if there were, none of them had a chance in hell of reaching him. With Junior grounded and no Sectonia or Kamek to safeguard the skies, the Seekers were vulnerable against aerial opponents. She, Roxas, and a few others were agile, but not that agile, and if anyone stopped long enough to fire off a few bullets or spells, D would return fire with ten times the fury. Was there seriously no limit to how much magic that dirtbag could pump out!? There wasn’t anything she could do…from the floor, at least.

Nadia snapped her fingers, then abruptly turned tail and ran. To the others it might look like she was being selfish and cowardly, distancing herself for the sake of her own safety no matter what happened to the others, but as convenient as it was for her, she did have a plan in mind. Hopefully the others could last long enough for her to pull it off. Given how close the Brother Moon’s tentacles were getting, their odds were getting closer by the second, but she had to do something!

Some of her allies, at least, had their fights a little more under control. While A had managed to snuff out one of his strongest attackers, that smidgen of relief came at a great cost, and those who remained were determined to make him pay the price. The Monster surged forward first, little more than a massive heap of raw power, instinct, and emotion. What followed was more of a beatdown than a fight, with A struggling to defend himself as his heavily damaged husk began to fail him. Even hunkering down did not avail him, however, as Primrose’s Makami siphoned from him, and the Monster took advantage of his unanchored state to hurl him into a nearby environmental hazard. It wasn’t the end of him, but it put the villain in a terrible position he was forced to literally claw his way up from. He did manage to strike a solid blow against the Monster while its overextension left it isolated from the other Seekers, but when A crested the edge of the pit he found the children very much alive, and before he could try to finish the Koopas off, Roland arrived.

A handful of abilities hammered the Consul in quick succession, followed by Roland himself in ghoulish attire. His rake scored A’s body, gouging a huge chunk of demonic metal flesh from his torso. Once gutted, he found himself buffeted by a thick cinnamon cloud, as hard and heavy as a fist. Its impact momentarily stunned him, its psychological component affecting his eldritch mind in some inexplicable manner, which paved the way for Primrose to take center stage. As A regained his senses in front of the empowered dancer, now on his last legs, he made the pragmatic choice to try something new: teleporting away. Yet no matter how he tried, his Moebius teleportation ability would not obey him–what had Roland done!?

He lashed out first. How could he not? And for a moment, it looked like he’d seized victory. Primrose doubled over, blood seeping from her mouth as her flesh yielded to his strike. When he attempted to recoil, however, the rose’s thorns pierced through his tentacle, more than living up to their name. A brilliant aura of black and white flared around Primrose, then flooded into the A’s flesh, a lance of pitch-black incineration that turned the Consul’s own limb into a burning fuse. He had only a split second to realize what was happening before the Black Serpent reached him, implanting Primrose’s dark magic into the very core of his being. ”Mortality-!”

Moebius A exploded in a maelstrom of rippling, roaring shadow. His failing body, unable to stitch or hold itself together any longer, was ground away into fitful purple sparks that were swallowed by the dark just as quickly. After a moment the tenebrous singularity subsided, leaving behind only a handful of misshapen hunks, including part of A’s head. The scattered remnants did not regenerate this time, but crumbled into nothingness bit by sickening bit. Even the glow of the red lemniscate in A’s eye had been extinguished, but it stared at the Seekers nonetheless, gleaming like a black pearl.

”Victory…” A’s tone was critical, almost chiding, even as it faded away. ”A hollow…and ridiculous…notion…”

Then the last vestige of the aberrant Moebius A was gone, at last.

Unfortunately, the Qliphoth was not yet free of dead flesh, even if it had gone to pieces. The grotesque separation of the Gravemind into a number of large, extremely aggressive fragments was overwhelming to Grimm for a few moments, but from her bird’s-eye view Blazermate managed to get a bead on the situation that the Troupe Master did not. In a bid to stop the Gravemind’s spore-dropping core from ascending out of reach and into the Brother Moon’s eager embrace, Blazermate applied herself in a uncharacteristically physical sense: she tackled the vile thing out of the sky. Her metallic limbs battered the bomber’s newly-formed body well enough, but it was her Suffering shield that did the trick, its teeth puncturing the core’s gas sacs enough to let out the lighter-than-air fumes lifting it upward. In a matter of moments the core wasn’t gaining altitude, but losing it, and in another few seconds it would be well within Ganon’s reach.

Determined to give his much larger ally the space he needed to bring the Guardian down for good, Grimm and his Grimmchild turned their attention toward the fragments down below. Though not particularly well-built, the horrors formed from the remains of the core’s chrysalis moved powerfully and erratically enough to be dangerous, as Zenkichi and Edelgard found out. Grimm joined in with barrages of firebats from afar, keeping himself out of harm’s way. Though things looked dicey for a moment or two, Edelgard held firm until Zenkichi composed himself, and the pair turned the tide in a storm of spells and steel. These fragments didn’t seem able to regenerate or reform, so the team picked them apart one slice at a time, and the arrival of Captain Falcon plus Roxas sealed the deal. For the finale, Grimm took a bow, his cloak moving on his own to plunge its tips into the ground and spear the last monster from below. With their last course served up on a silver platter, the others could make sure that the Gravemind got its just desserts.

As the gargantuan tentacles of the celestial monstrosity above drew close, Ganon mustered the last of his strength. The next moment, a torrent of purple energy burst forth from his gullet bringing long-overdue annihilation to the execrable Gravemind core. Once back on his human form, Ganondorf found himself caught in a downpour of ashen remains, gentle as snow. Soon after the spirit of the Dead Zone Guardian fell at his feet, the visage of his vanquished foe resplendent in a wreath of sickly green light. The Seekers had won.

The response from the floodfested collective was immediate. A hundred thousand voices wailing, lamenting, singing in an abominable chorus. Untold tons of undead biomass writhed in despair and pain, much of it so interwoven with the demon tree that the Qliphoth itself seemed to shake. Overhead, the Brother Moon was gone–gone, just like that. Far, far above the World of Light hung a dark, scarred moon, innocent but sinister. Yet to hatch. Had it all been a vision conjured by Consul A, a cosmically horrific feint to boggle the heroes’ minds? Nadia didn’t know, but she was indescribably glad that it was gone, and almost as glad when the floodfested finally stopped screaming.

When the noise began, the magical bombardment from Moebius D had ceased. At first he'd been incredulous, but the more he surveyed the situation on high, the less D could deny what had happened. Both O and A were dead, and the Gravemind had been destroyed. For all his power, he'd failed to stop the Seekers. Failed to stop a fourth of them, even. "No," he snarled through gritted teeth, dark magic flaring to life at his fingertips, but after a moment he let it go. D drifted down from the air, returning to his everyday form. "I must admit, I'm rather impressed," he conceded stiffly. "And it would seem that I've failed in my duty. Fighting for another's sake has never been my strong suit. I suppose congratulations are in order." He seized his cape and shrouded himself with it. "But make no mistake. We will meet again, and when that day comes, you will learn the the meaning of fear." Then, in a burst of purple energy, D vanished.

In the moment of silence that followed, though, there came one final surprise. Even as their bodies and collective intelligence disintegrated, however, the multitudes raised their wretched voices as one to make their last words heard.

”RESIGNATION IS MY VIRTUE. LIKE WATER, I EBB AND FLOW. DEFEAT IS SIMPLY THE ADDITION OF TIME TO A SENTENCE I NEVER DESERVED…BUT YOU IMPOSED.”

Nadia couldn’t help but shudder, but after the Gravemind delivered its own eulogy, its consciousness seemed to be gone for good. As the floodfestation died off, the branches and boughs they’d parasitized thrashed, withered, and began to fall apart. Cracks spread, the bark peeled away, and enormous slabs began to plummet toward the wastes below. With all the timefall dramatically hastening the Qliphoth’s degradation, it wasn’t hard to imagine the whole place coming down in half an hour or less. As much as Nadia wanted to slump down and not move for a good few hours, she knew she couldn’t relax just yet. “So…how’re we gettin’ outta here?” She craned her neck in the direction of the hollow’s entrance. “Race against the clock, all the way back to the bottom?”

“Nothing so dramatic.” Sandalphon’s voice reached her allies through their divine communication sigils, but after a pillar of blue light descended from the heavens, the archangel was here in the flesh. She’d arrived with a large, military-style duffle bag slung over her shoulder, just as she did in Mafia Town last night, and it didn’t take Nadia long to connect the dots. “Congratulations, Seekers. The World of Light is fifty-three point four percent saved. We cannot linger here, however. Everybody, please take a Fulton and prepare to ascend.”

The feral breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Finally, we get to do things the easy way for once.” After the odyssey it had taken the Seekers to reach this damn place, through rain-soaked wastelands infested with nuclear ghosts and a tower stuffed to the brim with monsters, the chance to soar straight out through the hole A opened in the roof was a welcome break. Practically the second she realized that she was in the clear, her adrenaline faded and fatigue came rushing in. Nadia laughed to herself and jogged over, shaking her head. “Jeez. What a day.”

Though eager to leave as the next guy, Grimm did not immediately follow Nadia’s example. After approaching Ganondorf he plucked the spirit of the Gravemind up in his slender black claws, but he did not try to use it. Instead he merely stared into the orb’s loathsome luster, his scarlet gaze almost reverent. Then he presented the spirit to Ganondorf, unaware of what needed to be done with it. ”To the victor go the spoils, hm?”

After that, he turned his attention to something nearby. It had been easy to miss in the heat of battle, but now that the action was over, it was practically impossible to miss. The reinforced coffin wielded by Goldlewis sat, motionless and silent, on the floor not so far from the wreckage of Drop in the Ocean. Though scuffed and scratched by countless battles in which it had served as a blunt force instrument, its heavy metal frame and spikes still shone with a defiant glint. Inside lurked the extraterrestrial entity that Goldlewis insisted on calling a cryptid, bereft of its bearer. Grimm approached it, his eyes unblinking. That man hadn’t been his friend, if such a concept existed in his mind to begin with, but Grimm knew that without Goldlewis, he wouldn’t be here. Now Goldlewis was gone, laid to rest in the Guardian’s grave, and though it wasn’t his coffin, this was all that remained of him.

When Grimm looked to his right, he found Sandalphon standing there. Her pupils resembled the lowercase letter V, and her hands were in her pockets as she bowed her head. “He was a soldier to the end. A man who walked hand in hand with death, bore its weight upon his shoulders his whole life, and who did not flinch from the end. We must take time to remember him.”

Grimm nodded, then bent down to take hold of the chain. He did not lay claim to it, and he could not carry it, but he could pull it back toward the group one tug at a time, in the hopes that someone else could carry its weight henceforth.

With the Qliphoth still falling apart, the team needed to get going. Once the Gravemind spirit, the veteran’s coffin, and any other immediate concerns were addressed, the Seekers could Fulton themselves up and out of the demon tree for aerial pickup by the Avenger. Though Nadia was among the first to extract, Sandalphon could wait to make sure everyone else made it before teleporting back. Over the course of this mission, she’d been tabulating a number of miscellaneous statistics, but four in particular stuck in her mind.

Twenty-four had entered. Twenty-one had returned.

Seven down. Six to go.

---

Yet again, Nadia came to in the bowels of the Avenger, surrounded by heavy-duty machinery in the dimly-lit deployment zone. Unlike last night, though, there were tons of people here waiting for the team, including Lost Numbers, former Alcamoth Mercenaries, reserve Seekers, and the three saved by Ace’s Palicos, not to mention the man himself. After everything that had happened, Nadia was especially relieved to see the Cadet safe and sound. There were no cheers or claps, fireworks, or party poppers, but everyone was ready and willing to do whatever they could to help the weary Seekers out. Bracket Brace was here with sodas, bottled waters, and snacks, while Eleison came prepared with medkits and vials of laudanum that could mitigate the stress they’d suffered. One could be certain that, despite the hour, Cirrus could be found in Stolen Moments, where visitors would find the memorial wall in dire need of an update.

Before everyone could go their separate ways, Sandalphon gave them a quick update. “I’ve conferred with Hope and Vandham. Though we are aggrieved to have sustained losses, the fact remains that you all fought well, and claimed victory. It is currently eleven fifty-one. The day is yours for decompression and recovery. After leaving Dead Zone airspace, the Avenger is bound for Hammerhead, to the south. We will reconvene in the Bridge at eighteen hundred hours to debrief, vote on our next destination, and hold a memorial service for the fallen, before proceeding to the mess hall for dinner. I understand that, for the first time since our arrival, the Commander will be making an appearance.” She paused, her face an unreadable mask. “Dismissed.”

Grimm stalked off without a word, the Grimmchild in tow. Nadia just sighed. Like many of the others, she imagined, she didn’t know what she wanted to do next. Get a drink, maybe? She’d drowned her sorrows after helping defeat the Orphan of Kos, after all. Then again, lunch sounded pretty good right about now, and afterward she could relax until Hammerhead, then maybe find something to do. It had been one hell of a morning.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Dead Zone Hinterlands - Martira, Old Castle Town

Harry’s @Eviledd1984
Word Count: 1080

Though all four players saw Harry approach, none really noticed him until he boldly announced his presence, both the somewhat brazen interruption and his stated career choice earning him a bumper crop of wary, suspicious, or downright unpleasant looks from just about everyone in his immediate vicinity. While it seemed like the somewhat shady denizens of this particular corner of the Friendly Arm could stomach Morris -maybe due to his apparent gambling debts?- the strident arrival of a true-blue cop in their midst was a definite buzz killer. “Detective?” The bird-headed man questioned, shifting in his seat uncomfortably. He fixed Morris with an unfriendly stare. “Friend of yours?”

“No,” Morris grunted through gritted teeth, either aggravated or embarrassed by the association, or both. After a second, though, he switched gears and tried to play off the annoyance casually. “Never seen ‘him before in me life.”

The tense atmosphere loosened a little once everyone realized what Harry’s concern was. Word of Martira’s crisis had reached even the most transient ears here, and few were truly cold-hearted enough to brush off the childrens’ plight. Still, even if a wolf happened to be chasing deer today, a hungry one might still snap at a rabbit, so Harry wouldn’t find much hospitality here. Once he started firing off questions, the crowd’s attention shifted back to Morris, who seemed to shrivel beneath the spotlight. “Uhh…”

After a second or so, the burly conductor sighed. “Well, don’t keep your buddy waitin’ on our account, Morris. Go ahead, your wallet could use the break anyway.” A wide grin spread across his face, and various onlookers snickered. The other players were all waiting to see his answer to what seemed like a test–to see where the guardsman’s priorities lay, and if he was still one of them or not.

Morris pursed his lips. “C’mon guys, I’m still in the game, yeah?” he insisted, not wanting to lose face. Turning toward Harry, he gave an exaggerated shrug. “Ach, can’t ye see I’m busy here, mate? It en’t even noon yet, so we got a while before any more wee ones go missin’. Go have yourself another round, will-!”

At that moment, however, the pot that had been boiling deep within Harry’s gut boiled over. Ever since he downed that Squeck Juice, his nagging symptoms of withdrawal had been relieved by the brain-numbing buzz, but the aftertaste of that ink-black brew had proven rather stubborn. No matter how many times he swallowed, that hoppy, saline flavor stuck to his throat, and after a minute or so it began to swell. There was a stirring, a squirming in his stomach, getting stronger by the second until finally, the detective couldn’t hold it back any longer.

With shocking suddenness, he doubled over the players’ table, throwing up a phlegmy, gelatinous wad of squano, which was even less pleasant than it sounded. It splattered across the wood, leaving Harry dizzy and one of the players’ winnings covered in gunk that reeked like a tide pool. The bird-headed man burst out in uproarious laughter, while Morris turned away, a pained expression on his face. The pink-haired woman, meanwhile, turned up her nose. “Are people really still falling for that?” She rolled her eyes.

Some bystanders joined in the fun, a couple friends even starting a chant. “Get squecked, get squecked!” they sang. Their merriment proved short-lived, however, when the conductor’s chair scraped backward across the floor, and the man rose to his feet. Everyone fell silent; it was his winnings that Harry had puked on, and judging by his face, he was not amused. He stood a head taller than the detective did, and twice as wide, not even accounting for the glowing green crystals that protruded from his shoulders. Standing before him felt like standing before a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami–as if the full brunt of a natural disaster were about to descend on Harry at any moment.

Morris gulped, his eyes widening. “H-hey, Stein, let’s just-”

“Now, why’d you have to go and do that?” Stein’s voice had hardened considerably.

At that moment, though, the floor shook ever-so-slightly, then again, and again. Though Stein’s sunglasses shielded his eyes, his head tilted toward something above and behind Harry, at which point it became apparent that the miniature tremors possessed the cadence of heavy footfalls. The next moment, a huge, bell-shaped figure, seven and a half feet high, came to a stop. “We gonna have a problem here, fellas?” came a rich baritone underlaid by a smooth metallic echo.

Stein didn’t seem to flinch at the newcomer’s arrival, though. “Dunno.” He looked back down at Harry, raising an eyebrow. “Are we?”

“Daddy!” At the sound of a little girl’s voice, Stein immediately turned his head. A much gentler smile spread across his face as a little blue-haired girl in a white winged dress ran over. Just like that, the imminent disaster was gone, replaced by fatherly love at the drop of a hat. “Um, it’s almost lunchtime,” the girl informed him, her manner timid. “Can we go get lunch?”

“Heh. Yeah, I could eat.” Having crouched down to pick her up, Stein walked off without a second glance at Harry, his money, or anything else.

In the moment of silence that followed, Morris shrugged, throwing up his hands. “Well, guess that’s the game, anyway!” He tugged at his color, glancing over at the two newcomers. “Fine, fine, I’ll take your damn questions, but gimme a minute, will ya? Wait for me outside.”

“Works for me.” Keeping his arms hidden beneath his massive trench coat, the big man used his head and fedora to point Harry toward the door. “C’mon, slick.”

A few moments later, both were back in the sunlit town square. A spindly mechanical limb slid out from beneath the stranger's coat in order to tip his hat. “You a detective too, huh? Hard not to notice you beltin’ it out like that, heh. I figure subtlety ain’t your strong suit. Well, seein’ as we’re in the same boat with the missin’ kids case, I just figured I’d lend you a hand.” When Harry’s new acquaintance removed his face from his respirator, he looked a lot less scary. “They call me Big Band, and I’m all there is of the most real. How ‘bout you?”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Amaterasu

Amaterasu (Ammy)

Origin: Okami
Appearance: To most, Ammy appears to simply be a white wolf. Only those beings related to divinity, such as gods, demons, angels, etc, or those with strong faith, can see the crimson markings, brush like flairs on her tail and shoulders and a divine instrument floating above her back
Personality:
Amateratsu is first and foremost a benevolent being that is always ready to aid those in need, and will put her all into doing so. She is however somewhat prickly about her flaws, as divines are want to be, and is liable to take offence to rudeness. In contrast she has little issue in being rude herself, and can rather easily grow distracted if she finds a situation boring.
She also doesn't like baths (presumably due to being a very poor swimmer).
Ultimately, however, getting a read on the divine wolf is somewhat difficult given her inability to speak her mind, and a tendency to be rather subdued in her canine expressivity out of a sense of dignity.
Background:
Once a being of the celestial realm, Amaterasu fought a war across time, lives, and dimensions against the demonic forces of Yami who first invaded the realm, and then secretly followed her to the mortal one. Upon achieving a final victory, hundreds of years after the conflict began, Amaterasu was ultimately prevented from returning home to the celestial realm by Galeem’s actions.
In the Now:
Amaterasu was spawned in an enclave of demon hunters that existed on the outskirts of the dead zone, where she played a part in a perpetual push and pull as said hunters tried and failed to cleanse the zone of its myriad of demonic infestations. She only survived the dead zone’s annihilation due to her astral pouch restoring her to life after the blastwave pulped her bones, and by then eating a golden peach, which refilled the pouch and let her live the second deathblow that being launched out of and then crashing back down to earth that the dead zone represented.
The place that she had been calling home was obliterated alongside the zone, vaporising the people and restoring nature she had been painting over the city, severely weakening the celestial. Despite her weakness, she made attempts at restoring the land once again all on her own, but beneath the timefall, nothing would stick, and she could find no way to dispel the BTs that seemed to be the cause. After a few days of this, and one to many close calls, a defeated Amaterasu left the deadzone for the lost cause that it was, and has struck out to find some other place in the world where she might do good.
And fill her stomach.
She ran into Martira soon after, but unfortunately the locals were none too keen with the idea of a random wolf wandering into town, especially one that had come from the direction of the dead zone, and so she was driven (or rather allowed herself to be driven) off. Still, she could sense something was wrong simply from watching from afar and so has been hanging around the village, trying to sniff out what it might be.
Job: Celestial Champion
Specialty: Ammy is a highly effective close range fighter, who also has access to powerful magic abilities that work best in combination with her allies, either by enhancing their attacks or borrowing elements from them.
Inventory:

• Divine Retribution: A divine disk, usable as either a bludgeoning weapon, or as a shield to block or parry incoming attacks.
• Devout Beads: A set of hovering holy beads that can either be lashed together and whipped forwards to deliver rapid attacks with great reach, or launched as a barrage of machine gun of projectiles (with a short reload time)
• Tsumugari: A massive blessed blade which can be used to deliver heavy charged strikes, either smashing it down, slashing it up, or diving forward thrusts.
• Astral Pouch: when filled with sufficient amounts of food, the pouch can ‘digest’ it all in one go to fully heal the carrier if they happen to suffer a mortal blow. Superior food items are worth more ‘food points’ with regards to filling the pouch.

Lv: 8
EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 0/90
Abilities:

• Celestial brush techniques: powered by a self regenerating ink pot resource, Ammy can pause time and paint divine acts into the world with the stroke of a brush. Unless stated otherwise, each technique costs 1 pot to use, and spent pots take 9 seconds to refill. She starts with 3, but more can be gained through praise.
  
  
  
  • Greensprout/Rejuvenation: Ammy can redraw damaged objects to restore them to their former glory. She can also draw around plants to revitalise them or cause them to bloom, draw lily pads onto water, draw trees into existence with a vertical stroke, or interact with plants that have game mechanics attached to them (such as Konohana Blossoms which will pull Ammy towards them).
  • Heavenly Influence: Ammy can draw either a sun or a moon in the sky to locally induce that time of day. She can also draw a swirling loop, creating a Galestorm of wind that blows in the direction for a few seconds, which can knock flying foes out of the air, alongside other utility functions.
  • Drawn wounds: Ammy can draw wounds directly onto objects or foes to attack them. Drawing a line deals a Power Slash, cutting them, while dabbing a dot on them shoots them with an Ink Bullet, puncturing them. The base damage is fairly low, but if done in tandem with an ongoing or just executed slashing or piercing attack from an ally empowers said attack to deal far more damage than the ally and Ammy would do if they attacked individually.
  • Cherry Bomb: drawing Q shape lets Ammy create up to three oversized (2 meters in diameter) bombs with several seconds long fuses that explode like a (massive) firecracker. Dousing or cutting the fuse can stop the bomb from going off, while fire can cause it to go off preemptively.
  • Waterspout/Inferno/Thunderstorm/Blizzard: Ammy can draw a line from a naturally occurring source of water/fire/electricity/ice and cause it to leap along the path to soak/burn/shock/freeze a target. This generates more of the element in the process, rather than transferring it, allowing the flooding of holes or borrowing from allies elements without disrupting them.

Skills:

• Celestial Wolf: Ammy has the physical attributes of a wolf enhanced by her divine nature, as well as their sharp senses of smell, sight, and hearing. This lets her race across the land at high speed, double jump, evade attacks with nimble grace, and detect and track foes with ease. She’s also good at digging stuff up and can taunt enemies via the ‘golden fury’ and ‘brown rage’ techniques (though this last tallent don’t really help in this specific situation)
• Divine Armory: Amaterasu can stash weapons within her own divinity, potentially allowing for quite the arsenal, though she is only able to levitate, and thus wield, weapons of a divine or holy nature. Two weapons can be equipped at once, one floating above her back and the other to her side. Swapping what is equipped takes a few moments of concentration to perform the requisite ‘inventory management’.
  She can also store ‘tools’ such as animal feed, treasures, healing items, money etc. within this same nebulous location as well.
• Godhood: Amaterasu can gain a defensive aura in return for landing multiple hits on enemies without taking damage herself. Each stack can negate a single attack from a foe, acting like a protective shield. She can gain up to three stacks of these shields, denoted by a red/yellow/green aura (which also causes her to produce green leaves/purple petals/cherry blossoms petals upon attacking, which do nothing except look pretty).

Weaknesses:

• Voice of the wolf: while Ammy understands the spoken word, she cannot speak it in turn due to lacking the necessary vocal cords and lips with which to form words.
• Paws of the wolf: Ammy lacks long fingers and opposable thumbs needed to directly interact with places/objects built/created with those in mind.
• Hidden divinity: to those without special sight for such things, Amaterasu appears to be simply an unusually intelligent white wolf, her divine weapons and markings, unseen to mundane eyes.
• Divinity runs dry: If Amaterasu uses all her ink pots, the above base wolf form becomes her true reality, preventing her from using her divine instruments, forcing her to resort to tooth and claw to deal damage till her ink is refilled.
• Super Drowning ability: Ammy and water do not mix, and as such she cannot swim for long before being dragged down to a watery grave.
• Powered by Praise: Amaterasu’s divine strength (specifically her hp and inkpot count) is built upon the happiness and good fortune of the people/animals/plants she has interacted with. Without their praise she is significantly weaker than she could otherwise be, making inflicting death and suffering upon them a way to indirectly stifle her power.
• To kill a god: weapons and techniques intended to specifically harm the divine, rare as they might be, will cut through Amaterasu’s godhood barriers like they are nought but air.

Spirits:

• N/A

Rapport:

• 
  

@DracoLunaris

Big fan of Amaterasu! Everything looks good, she is approved.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Dead Zone Hinterlands - Martira, Old Castle Town

Harry’s @Eviledd1984

Rummaging through waste on the way to the Friendly Arm turned up little in terms of value for Harry. His search turned up what one might expect: food waste (whether spoiled or inedible like peels and stems), broken or used-up objects, bits of excess building materials, and so forth. A broken bottle could conceivably be used as a weapon, and certain discarded items might still have a few uses left in them, but he didn’t find any spare change or refuse worth selling. In a village used to hard times, it seemed that people lived sparingly, and got their money’s worth out of every last cent. Taking the disturbed expressions of nearby onlookers into account, Harry’s efforts probably came to a deficit in terms of social value. The red-haired noblewoman, in particular, did not seem impressed by his self-assuredness; the look she gave him was rather pitying, the sort one might give a lame horse as its owner came to put it out of its misery.

On the ground floor of the Friendly Arm, Harry found a bar just as expected. The bartender, whose name tag read ‘Gillian’ was a young-looking man with scruffy dark hair and a patchy goatee. Not seemingly very outgoing, he focused on his duties with a serious, taciturn expression until the newcomer spoke up first. When asked about Morris, he took a quick look around, then -with the second of the two questions being a little easier to answer’ decided to tackle Harry’s queries in reverse order. Notably, he did not give Harry’s somewhat desperate attempt to nurse his empty wine bottle a second glance; no doubt this place had seen its fair share of boozers.

“Oily Oaf, or Squeck Juice?” he replied succinctly, reciting the names of the inn’s cheapest ails but nothing else about them. Depending on which one he chose, Harry would be in for a very different experience; Oily Oaf was light, but with a rich, buttery aftertaste, while Squeck Juice was inky, salty, and hoppy, liable to get him more inebriated but guaranteed to give him hiccups. Once Harry had officially patronized the establishment and received his beverage of choice, Gillian went ahead and addressed his other question. “You’ll find Morris at the card tables in the back,” he reported.

When Harry followed the barman’s directions, he found not one but several tables where customers were playing cards. The most notable one sported a quartet of anthropomorphic animals stressing out and accusing one another over some sort of simple but high-stakes card game, while others harbored more customary sorts like the typical long-eared Roussaintes, doglike Paripus, and angel-winged Ishkia. After a minute or so Harry could identify one man in the trappings of a guard, though. He was a dour-looking Clemar with violet eyes and brown hair tied back in a bun, and if the distribution of chips at his table was anything to go by, he seemed to be doing poorly. His opponents -a bushy-tailed witch, a big man with a bird head, an even bigger man with long ears, grayish skin, and crystalline protrusions- all seemed to be doing much better. Just as Harry walked up, the bird man reached out and scooped a big pile of chips toward him with his arms, chirping uproariously–and in a thick Russian accent. “Hah! Another round like that, Mister Morris, and you’ll have to take out another loan! Hahahaha!”

The big conductor shrugged it off and the witch took a sip of her drink, but Morris put his head in his hands. “Damn it!” he growled, even more Scottish than Bardon had been. “Why me?”

The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (187/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (122/90) Lvl 7 Sandalphon (84/70) Lvl 4 Grimm (37/40)
Midna, Junior, & Rika’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double

Though she typically pre-furred to be optimistic, for the others’ sakes if not her own, Nadia got the sneaking suspicion that what appeared to be D’s defeat was a little too good to be true. Considering the fight he put up as a mere Consul, she would have expected D to get more mileage out of his fearsome Moebius form than this. Nevertheless, she tried to hope for the best as she gathered up alongside Roxas, Geralt, Falcon, and Therion, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. By now, fatigue and injury were taking a toll on all of them. She herself needed healing, or at least a while to regenerate while her Life Gem did its thing, and the others probably weren’t much better off. Maybe they were trying to look on the bright side too, but with O’s fate unknown, and the battles against the Gravemind and A raging on elsewhere, it was hard to feel like the fight was over. Still…the Seekers had to be getting close!

After another moment, D’s eyes flickered open. Instantly he burst into a swarm of bats that surged upward like water from a geyser, quickly distancing themselves from the melee-oriented team. “I’ve toyed with you miserable cretins enough,” his disembodied voice snarled. Only once about a hundred feet in the air did the bats coalesce into the Consul once more, and with the aid of his magic D hung in the air, scythe at the ready, glaring down at the Seekers imperiously. “I had thought to honor your reckless courage with a personal death at my own hand.” Sophisticated purple and red magic circles inscribed themselves in the air around him, layered and turning. “But now, you will suffer the dispassionate indignity of bombardment from afar, without the faintest hope of fighting back!”

So saying, the Consul began to cast. D conjured a roving deluge of boiling blood, a rain of meteors, spinning sickles, batstreams that spiraled down to crash against the floor with crushing force, and Destruction Rays one after another. From his lofty -and mobile- vantage point he could abuse his seemingly infinite reserves of mana while none of his challengers could even hope to reach him, let alone hurt him. Some of the five had appreciable aerial mobility, but all ultimately fell short, especially with D’s smorgasbord of sorcery coming the opposite way. True his word, this was no longer a real fight; it was a hellstorm in which it took everything the enervated Seekers had just to survive. “Yes! Run, run!” D taunted from above. “Draw your deaths out as long as you like! I am Moebius - I have all the time in the world!”

One side-effect of the havoc wreaked by Moebius D was its potential for interfering in other fights, at least one of which could really use the help. Though dauntingly hardy at first blush once it went mobile, the Gravemind quickly found staunch opposition in the form of Ganon. Mostly ignoring the other Seekers’ efforts, the two giants traded blows, Ganon faster than his foe but obliged to work harder to pierce the Gravemind’s tougher defenses. Thanks to Sandalphon’s Angel Wings and Blazermate’s continuous restoration, though, the Gravemind’s toxic biological countermeasures were not as great a concern for him, and with the bestial warlord taking point the heroes made good progress. After one head fell the spore grenades spouted from its severed stump complicated things, but the heroes did not relent. Edelgard strove to put Sandalphon’s advice into action by targeting one of the giant horror’s three mammoth legs, Once she softened it up with Flickering Flower, Zenkichi braved the Gravemind’s fumes and fury to shatter the wounded limb with a fully-charged Eruption, its raw force and explosive flame proving equal to the task. Once its leg was crippled, the ungainly amalgamate’s own weight did the rest, and as a thousand twisted voices wailed the Gravemind crashed to the floor.

That was just the opportunity that Blazermate had been waiting for. Sensing victory, the dutiful medabot gave Ganon the second wind he needed to push toward the battle’s finale. Strengthened by the Kritzkrieg, Zenkichi’s Heat Riser, and more, the behemoth went whole hog against the downed Gravemind in a terrific physical and magical onslaught. He chewed through his foe’s innate damage reduction and demolished it one big chunk at a time. Its agonized roar shook the Qliphoth, as if the demon tree itself were screaming. ”I HAVE SPENT EONS WAITING, WATCHING, PLANNING! WILL NOT AGAIN BE TORN ASUNDER! NOT NOW THAT I'M FREE, NOT NOW THAT I’M WHOLE!” Even if the Kritzkrieg’s ubercharge lasted only eight seconds, it was enough to turn the tide irreversibly in Ganon’s favor. Within fifteen seconds, a second head had been destroyed: the Ancient Infested head, responsible for the manipulation of the Gravemind’s colossal scythe. Immobilized and robbed of two heads, the Gravemind could do little but spew its infectious vapors if Ganon remained on the opposite side. Even the tentacles of the Brother Moon overhead, stretching ever closer to the Qliphoth, seemed to writhe in shared pain.

As its biomass was reduced, it was losing its intelligence–its very sense of self. The Gravemind had only one card left to play. As the Seekers’ assault continued, somewhat less than before, it began one final, large-scale transformation. Its body shifted and reshaped itself, splitting into five pieces. Two were formed from its other legs, and the other two had the bulk from its remaining head. Once separated they attacked, one each for Zenkichi and Edelgard with two to try and occupy Ganon. From the wreckage of the Gravemind’s body, however, rose its core in the form of a bloated mish-mash somewhere between a Bomber Form and a Genetrix. Jettisoning non-essential tissue as spore grenades, the Gravecore floated upward, as if to reunite with the Brother Moon far above.

Following Midna’s death, A resumed the fight against Primrose and Roland with a cold nonchalance, as if nothing at all had happened. By its logic, perhaps, an eventuality had merely come to pass, and more were soon to come. For the Seekers, though, things were different now. They had somebody to avenge, and something they could not allow to transpire again. Intensified and razor-sharp, the dancer and the fixer went to work, and a moment later they found their efforts joined by those of Goldlewis Dickinson. The veteran belted out his fury as he attacked, alternating between Behemoth Typhoons and shotgun fisticuffs.

Tactically speaking, A was a risk that could no longer be tolerated, but Goldlewis would be lying if he said there wasn’t a personal element to his wild assault, too. He kept up the pressure on A while Roland sealed him with Emerald and Primrose tempered herself with a well-timed dance. As soon as her performance concluded, a maelstrom of savage shadows and deadly flames befell the Consul, each smoldering burn converted into a single incinerating burst. After another few seconds, even more backup arrived in a form that none of the other Seekers recognized: a huge, arthropod juggernaut, whose startling screech had reverberated around the hollow moments before. The sight of it threw Goldlewis off, but since it didn’t fit the opposition’s aesthetic he held off making judgements, and the sight of the Monster bulling into A the next moment dispelled all doubt.

The combined koopa kids crashed into A like a landslide, the mighty impact actually doubling A over and leaving it vulnerable. They pressed their advantage without hesitation, and the rest of their team followed their example. Berzerk Blast paved the way for Rites of Termination, Furioso’s finale, and finally, a brutal Down With the System from Goldlewis. It was a staggering beatdown, leaving A unable to fight back for more reasons than one, and yet…

Moebius A still clung to life. ”Self-deceiving figments!” Its voice was frayed by its fury, rendered by ruptured organs that railed and refused to give in. ”I WILL HAVE MY DUE!” Before the Seekers could destroy it, the thing they all feared came to pass–a second, terrible invocation of its eldritch power, Undo. The hollow around them melted into a that loathsome chamber surrounded on all sides by nightmarish masses of meat. ”CHOOSE!”

“Damn it!” Goldlewis growled between haggard, panting breaths. Even after Sandalphon’s healing, he was on his last legs, his mind and body under a great deal of strain, and now he was going to lose another ally. He’d only spent a short time with Midna, but he could see her face in his mind’s eye, clear as day. Her voice and her visage haunted him, joined to the ethereal chorus that had hounded him all his years. How many more men and women were going to die under his command!?

Goldlewis clenched his jaw, steadying himself. It was wrong to give into hysteria; if all the blood on his hands hadn’t broken him before, one more corpse on the pile wouldn’t break him now. Nevertheless, the loss of her life weighed on him, and after a moment something dawned on him. It didn’t seem right that he, a tired and sad old man, a soldier of a dozen campaigns, ought to keep living while the young ones with bright futures ahead of them went away. For a long time, Goldlewis had considered the possibility of giving his life for his country -for its people- the highest honor. Freedom wasn’t free, after all; somebody always had to pay the price. The last time A used this dreadful dark art, the other Seekers had quailed from his proffered grasp. He had quailed. He hadn’t said anything, but a dozen thoughts had rushed through his head, a dozen reasons why it should be somebody else, anybody but him. If nothing changed, though, these walls of flesh would come crashing in, and destroy the whole team where they stood.

”What now, you who remain?” A crowed as the unfathomably maw closed in around the Seekers. ”Moebius fills you. Moebius IS you. Return, from whence you came!”

Goldlewis blinked. “Ohhh…” he murmured, scratching his beard with a wry smile. “So that’s it. I see. Well.” He took a deep breath. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Then he opened his eyes. “Fine.”

Aboard the Avenger, Sandalphon widened her eyes, her pupils no more than empty rings. “Goldlewis!”

For a moment A gnashed its teeth, but it obliged him all the same. A tentacle shot forward, twisting toward Goldlewis. His face tightened as his breath billowed across his whiskers from his nose, and with nothing else to his name, he raised a fist in defiance. “I’m ready!” he barked, leaping up in order to airdash toward him. Time seemed to slow as the arrowhead tentacle veered toward him. With his left hand he extended two fingers toward the Consul, like a baseballer calling a home run. Veins bulged and glasses shattered as Goldlewis then threw his right punch. “How ‘bout you!?”

The next moment, it was done. Roland, Primrose, and the Monster stood alone in the Final Hollow before Moebius A, the monster slumped over and on its last legs. The heart in its back pounded, its terrible powers were mostly exhausted or sealed, and it had only a few eyes left with which to stare balefully at its lessers. Nevertheless, it lived. ”Even the aged oak will fall to the tempest's winds.” it remarked, lifting its arms for the final round. ”More dust. More ashes. More disappointment.”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Dead Zone Hinterlands - Martira, Old Castle Town

Harry’s @Eviledd1984

“Ach, of course, we’ll get those right away.” Bardon looked around until he spotted one of the guards from his patrol who had yet to disperse, primarily due to the Recruitment Center’s resident beagle who’d made a beeline for him in search of attention. He was a young, clean-shaven man whose kettle helm hung down over his eyes, and though unremarkable at first blush, he seemed eager and pleasant enough if the dog’s favoritism was anything to go by. After a moment spent trying to catch the guardsman’s attention, Bardon cleared his throat. “Ahem!”

The young man perked up right away, a sheepish look on his face. “Oh! Right away, sir!” He patted the beagle’s head twice and then took off at a jog, though naturally his companion followed on his heels, floppy ears streaming behind her.

Suppressing a smile, Bardon refocused on Harry. “Beg your pardon. As for your other questions, er. I’m afraid wee ones have been goin’ missin’ for a while now, at least a month. We thought it was the Dead Zone monsters at first, so…we looked to our defenses from the outside, never guessin’ that it was someone sneakin’ in. We don’t know when Heismay started lurkin’ around, but we’ve seen him, aye. My second-in-command, Morris, saw the blackguard himself, skulkin’ around the lower districts in the dead of night. Just about caught him red-handed, too, but he slipped away, and he’s gotten more careful–none of my men have seen him since.” The knight balled his fist, his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed. “It’s a right sorry state of affairs.”

Just then, the Gatekeeper returned with a notepad, quill, and bottle of ink, which he promptly offered to Harry while the beagle snuffled at his shoes. “Here you are, sir! If you need anything else, let me know!” After tossing a scrap of jerky to distract the dog, he hoofed it in the other direction, eager to resume his customary post.

“Right then.” Bardon stood up from his table and extended his hand to shake Harry’s. “I should get goin’. I’ll let the boys know to make you comfortable ‘round town. If you’re lookin’ for somewhere to start, Morris might have some clues about Heismay. He’s off-duty in the mornin’, so I expect you’ll find him at the Friendly Arm. Can’t miss it, it’s the biggest inn around. Best place to catch up on the latest rumors, too. Could be a speck of truth in ‘em somewhere we missed. Best of luck to ye.”

With that, Bardon was off. When Harry stepped back out into the late morning sunlight, he no longer saw some sleepy backwater hamlet, but a dozen deviating pathways spiralling outward into a hidden web of secrets. A lot hung in the balance for how little he had to go on, but already he could see the pieces arranged on this board, and no problem worth solving was easy. The game was on.

In front of him lay the town plaza, with its central fountain dutifully splashing away. Most of the town’s established businesses inhabited buildings around this plaza or along the upward hillside road to the old keep, but a few itinerant merchants had planted stalls along the mossy cobblestones here. They kept a sharp eye out for both danger and potential customers; the general atmosphere here seemed to indicate that nobody could be too careful. The most well-to-do among them was a portly, bespectacled fellow who seemed be selling premium cooking ingredients, which had garnered the interest of a round, orange-furred creature and a young, red-haired lady in expensive-looking attire. Aside from the handful of vendors, though, this public space harbored only a scant few residents whiling away the time. Between here and the Friendly Arm, only a couple people stood out: a bard in a distinctive bear-skin cowl livening things up a little, a dapper man with long sky-blue hair beneath a black bowler hat taking in the scenery with strange, sapphire-bright eyes, and a random gunslinger seated in a corner who seemed to be crafting potions with herbs, mushrooms, and honey. If there were any children left around here, they were locked up tight indoors.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (179/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (122/90) Lvl 7 Sandalphon (84/70) Lvl 4 Grimm (37/40)
Junior & Rika’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 1882 (+3x2)

Though smaller and perhaps less imposing like this, the Gravemind’s new form was in almost all aspects a straight upgrade. Being able to move, and at not insignificant speeds, made it a harder target by default, and as Zenkichi quickly found out when he spent big on Agneyastra, it was much, much hardier than it looked. Those meteors made an impact on his target, but not nearly as much as they should have. In fact, the Gravemind’s new body -a hyper dense composite of all the strongest materials from its constituent biomass- reduced all incoming damage by a whopping seventy percent. It barely flinched from the detective’s Ragnell blasts, and his bullets only scratched it. With the Gravemind stomping around, blanketing large swathes of the arena with toxic smog as it swung its scythe to and fro, this would be a tedious war of attrition if he couldn’t figure out a better way to fight it.

Fortunately, that was what Sandalphon was for. When called, the archangel answered immediately, though she seemed to be raising her voice over background noise that sounded rather like her using her gunstaff. “It’s not just the heads themselves. I have identified one point of interest on each. Look for pink glowing light. Enough damage to one may eliminate one head entirely. Accomplishing this would take more focus and ammunition than you can spare, though. I recommend targeting a leg. With the weight distribution of its new form spread over only three legs, it will drop if it loses even one.”

Not everyone needed to sweat the details, however. For Grimm, the plan was the same as ever. As dangerous as the Consuls were, the Troupe Master was well aware of the team’s real objective, so despite their reduced effectiveness he continued his hit-and-run tactics. Grimm launched firebats from afar, warped in to ignite the Gravemind’s legs with claw slashes, and speared those limbs from below, covered by supporting fire from his Grimmchild. With his natural constitution and the regular heals from Fire Enthusiast, he did not recoil from the Gravemind’s toxic clouds; if anything, they made it harder for the Guardian to lash out at him.

Ganondorf needed no such tactics, though. After startling both enemy and ally alike with his intense, resounding bellow, he transformed into Ganon to turn the scramble against the Gravemind into a clash of the titans. The great beast poured his fury into an onslaught against the nearest head, the one with lateral tentacles and a boxy shape. Only with the help of its damage reduction could the Gravemind withstand his outrage. The pounding, slashing, maiming assault, followed by a cascade of Dark Breath, proved enough to destroy the targeted head, but after reeling the Gravemind struck back. Given plenty of time to take aim, the head to the left swung its massive scythe just beneath Ganon’s collarbone, hard enough to pierce deep into the monstrous warlord’s body. Then, with its target impaled and unable to move, the Gravemind used both its third head and the stump of its first to launch a bombardment of spore grenades that pummeled Ganon like a cluster bomb. Blazermate would find her impressive single-target healing pushed to its limits by such a vicious response. As the bombardment concluded, however, Grimm appeared on Ganon’s shoulder and threw open his cape to help out with a firebat salvo to the Gravemind’s stump. ”Hear its swan song,” he rasped as the undead voices wailed. ”The curtain calls. Fight on!”

On the other side of the arena, after their scramble to get past O’s attractions, Junior and Rika made an entrance by busting into the Command Center’s reinforced dome with a mighty swing from the crane ride’s submersible pod. With a tremendous crash, they fell through a shower of glass into the jungle enclosure of the Tyrannosaurus that Juri had escaped a few seconds prior, triggering the beast’s fight or flight instinct. While the kids might not escape the T-rez as easily as she did, Juri at least was free to hunt O down–a fact that did not go unnoticed by the incredulous Consul himself.

Back toward the hollow’s front, Consul D scowled at the sight of Roxas and his split keyblade toss. He curled his wings around to shield himself from both sides. The weapons bounced off, but after he’d taken so many light-infused shots from Pit already, the extra bursts jolted his wings enough that he couldn’t use them to take flight for a moment. “Insolent whelp!” He unleashed a tunnel of flame from within his cape. Once it destroyed the boy’s charge shot, he dragged the infernal torrent around to target the whole team, blasting Nadia on the way. What he did not notice, however, was the raw slab of meat that plopped down at his feet.

“Meat your match!” Nadia shouted with a wink.

When a huge tiger popped into being, D’s first thought was to back up. Instead he backed into the cubes placed by Roxas, and in that moment of stoppage the tiger’s claws mitt raked across his left forearm. “Damn you!” He sliced at the beast with his scythe, ducked around another slash, then opened its chest from hip to shoulder to banish the tiger from existence.

At that moment, though, another steak smacked him, and another tiger appeared. Nadia was spawning them as fast as she could, gleefully chortling as she burned through her limited ammo. “Watch out–these aren’t miss-steaks!” With D still losing ground, he couldn’t dispatch the feral’s tigers faster than she could summon them, so as the blood rain petered out and his other foes pushed in, he performed an evasive mist step backward.

He reappeared at the remains of his throne, his breathing labored. Though he managed to make his opponents pay for every inch, he could not deny the fact that the Seekers were gaining ground, much to his chagrin. The two hunters possessed both skill and power, the two boys wielded his weakness alongside their dual blades, and the two thieves imaginatively and mercilessly exploited every opportunity. Now that they were working together, bringing their varied abilities to bear two or three at a time, the six were proving to be troublesome. Not more than he could handle, he didn’t think, but perhaps more trouble than the Guardian was worth.

D looked around for a moment, alerted to the distinct lack of widespread chaos. While he could see plenty of stuff that O left behind, his fellow Consul’s disembodied eyes were nowhere to be seen. Had O already been defeated? Forced to retreat? Or to focus on saving himself? With how strong the Seekers must be to challenge him to this extent, D would not be surprised to learn that O had been beaten, that old fool. Meanwhile the Gravemind had lost or consolidated enough mass to go mobile. The Brother Moon descended from the skies above, which would almost certainly wipe the heroes out once it arrived, but while D could feel a terrible power -even by his standards- emanating from A, it did not seem like the Consul could escalate any further. Meanwhile, the Seekers still swarmed the place like gnats. Far too many remained at this point, given how many Consuls happened to be backing the Guardian up, himself amongst them!

“...Vermin!” D spat. Even if things weren’t going to plan, he would not relent so long as the Guardian lived. To that end, it was time for him to follow in A’s footsteps. “Consider yourselves honored,” he announced, the Moebius core in his chest spinning up. “Today, you will have the privilege of witnessing my true, perfect form!” In a surge of purple light D transformed, entering his twelve-foot tall Moebius form, his enormous wing-like arms spread wide as he leered down at the Seekers. “Grovel before me, and your deaths will be mercifully swift!”

Nadia looked up as she retrieved her daggers, then slipped them back into her belt with a sigh. Her burns and other wounds were regenerating well enough, and the feral knew she could keep fighting, but even she was starting to lose steam. “Sheesh. You bozos don’t know when to quit!”

For a moment Moebius A’s attention had remained on the majestic nightmare unfolding far above him, eyes wide as if in admiration of the cataclysmic horror soon to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting Seekers, if not the World of Light itself. Once he came under fire, however, he returned his focus to his enemies. It looked like a new batch of would-be heroes had subbed in for those left dazed and reeling from his stresscasting, lest they succumb to a breakdown like that tactician did. A smart move on Seekers’ part, but ultimately a futile one. These fools would fall like all the rest–one way or another. ”Ringing ears. Blurred vision. The end approaches!”

A soon realized, though, that his new challengers were every bit as tenacious as his last. Fresh from their respective fights, these courageous few hit the ground running, piling on a lot of damage in a short time. Though Midna, hit hard, few hit harder than her colossal thrall’s greatsword, which cleaved away a whole chunk of A’s vitality in one blow. Roland followed up with an even more spectacular feat that had to be seen to be believed. And while he might resist Primrose’s sorcery to begin with, every spell she landed made him more susceptible, and Luna pierced his defenses. Perhaps the loss of their comrades or the dreadful sight of that aberrant moon spurred them to new heights, forcing them to make the most of what little time they had left.

Of course, A struck back with a vengeance. He wielded his formidable Moebius body to unleash a slew of brutal attacks targeting the Seekers with the lowest resistances. Dissolution could leave foes stunned and blighted by the awful sensation of flesh-eating bacteria, while the wounds left by Puncture bled exorbitantly. He could even target the mind with Know This, ravaging the Seekers’ sanity instead of their bodies. All the same, his attackers did not relent, and as his own vitality continued to drain, A's anger rose. These imbeciles still did not understand what they were doing–and it was time to show them.

His eye and core gleamed with vivid crimson light as A spread his arms wide. “Moebius gave every one of you life!” he cried. “And Moebius can take it away! Come, unto your maker!”

Immediately, the whole battlefield seemed to shift around the Seekers. Their vision swam, heavily distorted, and the darkness closed in. When their surroundings finally resolved themselves, they seemed to be in a dark, dome-shaped room with walls of moving, amorphous flesh, lined with eyes and fangs. Those walls shifted and well, slowly closing in on the trapped heroes. Their will and ability to fight had deserted them, leaving them paralyzed by something akin to fear as they stood before a floating Moebius A, his hand extended downward as if to accept one of his enemies’.

”Choose.”

Nadia shrank away from the monstrous thing’s hand, her ears flattened and her teeth bared. What was happening? Why couldn’t she fight back? She willed her claws to sharpen, and her muscles to tense, but her body didn’t obey. Instead her heart pounded, and her nerves trembled. None of this made any sense! It sounded like A was forcing one of her teammates to offer themselves up. For what sinister purpose, she could only imagine, but it wasn’t hard to grasp the dreadful implication within A’s words. She knew only one thing: that she refused to play along. She couldn’t die here. She wouldn’t! Not after everything she’d lost to get this far. Not before everything she stood to gain! “Sorry, A-hole. I’ve got too much to live for to die here!” And with that, the buck was passed.

”I’m… Not coming back from that. The me that is here is the only one that will ever be me, and so you can’t have me back” Rika replied in turn. The girl’s entire being was entirely a product of the world of light, of this one life in it. She was only a step behind the lost numbers in that regard, because without the events of the past few weeks, she would be nothing but a nameless pawn of the abyssal fleet. There was little to no chance the coincidence that had freed her, created her, would ever happen if she was respawned, and so she declared ”and you’ll never make another me again!”

Roland got ready himself for this incoming attack. He was a survivor, he wouldn’t just give himself up to some monster, only the foolish do that. No matter the trial, no matter the opponent, he’d fight for his survival and this wasn’t any different. ”I don’t listen to lunatics. You're not the first, and you won't be the last.”

Edelgard bristled, her eyes blazing with fury. ”I have too much to do to falter here. The people of Adrestia still need their Empress, monster.”

Next up was Juri. ”Not it!” She said, teeth clenched.

Though Grimm’s eyes burned with scarlet flame, the gaze that fell on Moebius A was cold. ”If you are not my nightmare’s heart, my flames will not stoke you.”

Geralt simply sighed. “Not happening.”

Zenkichi, on the other hand, slumped his shoulders. It felt like the weight of the world was resting on him. But he took a deep breath, and stood to his full height. ”No. We stand together. We live together.”

Though unable to move, Primrose's eyes flashed with deadly anger. So this was what Sandalphon had warned them about, how A had overcome other parties of would be world saviors in the past. It was quite cruel - she could easily imagine the selfless people that would have given themselves over to him to save their friends.

But that wasn't her.

"You won't have me," she said. "I won't be stopped, not until I have my vengeance."

Therion did not have any grand reason for wanting to stay alive, and figured he didn't really need one. When A's gaze passed over him he tensed and only said, "I don't think so."

"As if any one of us is gonna give in to the likes of you!" Pit added, a defiant stare turned up at the Moebius.

”Yeah you're not going to get the team medic to agree to that. Or anyone.” Blazermate said, staring darts at A as she wanted to just ubersaw him to make her allies finish him faster.

At some point, the walls of this extra-dimensional meat-space had gotten too close to ignore. They shifted and changed in a most horrifically fascinating way, an endless churn of new winking eyes, new gnashing teeth, and new covetous claws. Those eldritch boundaries rose up beneath the Seekers, lifting them higher, descended toward them, and closed in around them. The walls quivered, like a dam about to burst. All the while A’s rictus grin of metal and bone seemed to grow wider and wider as the entity recorded the responses. ”Ahh! Moebius is strong within you! We are your trembling limbs, your chattering teeth, your muttered excuses, your averted eyes! By all means, then, stay! Abide with us, within our Endless Now!”

As the walls closed in, and the certainty that something terrible was going to happen began to set in, Jr glanced at his sister then and began to say something, only to be immediately cut off by the masked figure to his side.

”Come and take me then, as if it will help you!” Midna declared. Her expression was hidden, but her nails were pressed so hard into her hands she was drawing blood as she steeled herself for the end. But then, after all ”What’s one more death in this world?”

A stared at her for a moment, silent. The walls of this aberrant realm stilled, the gleeful hunger of Consul and cosmos alike quelled, as if the feast set before them had been replaced by a mere morsel. Then his chest shifted, and an amorphous tentacle extended. It stretched through the air, its barbed tip aglow with an awful crimson light, and sank into Midna’s chest. She jolted sharply, then relaxed. Her eyes slid closed, and as her body turned to light, her sigh echoed through the eldritch space. Then there was a flash, and everything had returned to how it had been before A cast his fell magic. That nightmare, at least, was over, but the Twilight Princess was gone.

The next second, though, the eighteen who remained experienced a surge of nauseating existential terror. Between the Brother Moon on its way, Midna’s all-too-sudden end, and the fact that all four foes stood stronger than ever, it was a lot to bear. For those subjected to arcane physical and psychological torment by A, however, it proved to be entirely too much to bear. The extra stress pushed Goldlewis, Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, and Therion over the edge, and their bodies rebelled like Edward’s had. Goldlewis sank to his knees with a hollow, guttural groan, clutching his chest in the throes of a heart attack. Pain, fatigue, lightheadedness, dizziness, nausea, cold sweat–it all hit the man like a freight train as he suffered a meltdown. For once in the veteran’s life his strength, honed by bearing countless heavy burdens, proved insufficient to shoulder the weight of what he’d experienced.

From the perspective of Moebius D, the Seekers had vanished for a moment, then reappeared none the worse for wear, only for half of his challengers to falter the next moment. With only Geralt, Roxas, and Pit still standing before his new form, his victory seemed all but certain. A nasty grin spread across his demonic face. “Ah, so even heroes can be made to kneel! A wise choice!” He lifted his scythe, enlarged to suit his bigger body. ”In that case, I shall make good on my word!”

A beam of bright blue light descended from the sky, its holy radiance brilliant enough to give the vampiric Consul pause. When it ended Sandalphon stood there in the glow of her three-ring halo, her face hard as she clutched her gunstaff with both hands. It was true that she’d lacked the skill charge to help out so far, but that was before she requested the aid of Sectonia’s Antlers to use as batteries. “Seekers of Light, do not despair! Stand strong, in Illia’s name!” she called out as she cast Angelic Wings. Circuits of light spread along the Qliphoth floor around her in intricate circular patterns as holy screens picked up speed, then spread outward. Her miraculous skill not only fully healed all nearby allies, but thanks to Coordination Protocol, boosted their maximum health by twenty percent if they had any status afflictions to purge. Then Sandalphon brought down her staff to leave behind a healing circle, and with every ounce of strength left in her hoarse voice cried, “Onward, to victory!”

“Gah!” D snarled, having shielded his eyes from the archangel’s light. He watched as Goldlewis, Falcon, and Therion got back up, then snorted. “Very well. Slow and painful it is!” He drew in magic power, then spread his limbs. “Destruction Ray!” From each and every claw -including those on his wings- flew a beam of purple dark magic that arced through the air. Unlike Dominus Hatred, these rays would seek their targets, and three sought out Sandalphon in particular. They shot down at her with blistering speed, but before the beams could make contact, the archangel disappeared once more.

Two cycles until the Brother Moon’s impact

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Dead Zone Hinterlands - Martira, Old Castle Town

Harry’s @Eviledd1984

Owed in large part to its age and origins, Martira was not the simplest town to navigate. Its core had been built to not to facilitate quick and easy travel, but to obstruct and frustrate invaders back when war had embroiled the Kingdom of Euchronia. During the times of relative peace that followed, the surviving soldiers beat their swords into plowshares and raised families in this borderland bastion. As a result, Martira had not undergone any urban planning, but had grown in an almost organic fashion around the old keep. The locals might know its irregularities like the backs of their hands, but newcomers were bound to experience their fare share of wandering.

As such, Harry had plenty of time to take in the sights, and he certainly found his fair share of interesting things to see, but what he did not find was an excess of hospitality. The townsfolk here were furtive, nervous, and standoffish. Learning about the calamitous Dead Zone in uncomfortably close proximity to Martira would explain some of this behavior, but not all of it, since most of the citizens seemed rather cagey about something specific to Harry himself, completely unrelated to the accursed territories nearby. As Harry saw more people and got a better idea of the populace, however, he might begin to figure things out. The vast majority of Martira’s townsfolk sported not-standard features of some stripe, such as strange ears, horns, animal tails, or straight-up inhuman physiology. Of particular prominence were the Roussainte, the tall long-eared ones, and the Clemar, with their distinctive horns. Each ‘tribe’ tended to be clannish and curt, if not downright exclusory, to the others, and for some reason or another that seemed to go double for Harry. Everywhere he went he found strange looks, wary glances, and narrowed eyes, and the word ‘Elda’ muttered under folks’ breath.

After about half an hour, and a couple inquiries at incorrect places, Harry finally found the guard captain at the Martira Guard Center. It was essentially a one-stop shop for recruitment, bounties, barracks, and everything that concerned the town’s defenses, and a Dead Zone patrol led by Bardon himself had just returned. While his squad dispersed in the general direction of Martira’s taverns, though, Bardon himself stuck around, offering the detective the perfect chance to meet him.

Bardon turned out to be a tall, broad-shouldered, middle-aged fellow whose long ears marked him as a Roussainte, to use the local terminology. Formidable, but not flashy, he sported an olive green overcoat tailored to be worn over high-quality plate mail, with a saber at his side and an arcane artifact known as a Magic Igniter around his neck. He had grayish hair just starting to thin, a chinstrap beard, and an exceptionally stern expression. Children seemed to quail at the sight of him, but he bore no hostility–only a frank and painfully serious nature. When he caught sight of a newcomer, his initial surprise quickly gave way to hope.

“G’mornin’ to ye,” Bardon greeted Harry with a strong Scottish accent. “There’s lots o’ folks ‘round here that need help, but if you came to me lookin’ for work, aye, there’s somethin’ I -the whole town really- need help with. I dinnae think it would come to this, but…loathe as we are to admit it to outsiders, we’re desperately in o’er our heads at this point. See, every week or so, some wee lad or lass goes missin’. Sometimes two or three at a time. At first we thought it was monsters from the Dead Zone, but it blew up almost two weeks ago and the situation hasn’t improved." Though he kept a stiff upper lip, Bardon seemed rather despondent about the whole matter, as if the burden of responsibility lay on his shoulders alone.

After a moment he cleared his throat and continued. "The only lead we’ve got left is Heismay, a disgraced knight who’s been livin’ near town. Problem is, he’s holed up in ol’ Curien Mansion up the hill. Place is a deathtrap, and we don’t have the soldiers to storm it. If you can solve this crisis, the bounty on Heismay’s head is yours. Lady Joanna put it up herself, so you can expect a handsome reward.” Bardon pursed his lips, his hand rested on his belt by the hilt of his sword. “If there’s anythin’ ye need, anythin’ at all, whatever assistance I can offer is yours.”

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow

Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (167/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (116/90) Lvl 7 Sandalphon (78/70) Lvl 4 Grimm (31/40)
Midna, Junior, & Rika’s @DracoLunaris Blazermate & Roland’s @Archmage MC Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s @MULTI_MEDIA_MAN Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s @Yankee Juri’s @Zoey Boey Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s @Double
Word Count: 3002

Fighting Consul D was always going to be tricky, no matter how many people were up against him. More combatants meant less time any one hero needed to bear the brunt of his fury, but it also increased the risk of friendly fire incidents and generally getting in one another’s way. Confident that greater numbers meant nothing against his wide-ranging magics, D welcomed the Seekers’ five-on-one challenge with open arms and dramatic flair. When Geralt offered his rebuttal and stepped forward to lead the charge, the battle was on.

After the indignity of what happened to her before, Nadia was eager to pay D back, and with interest. This time, though, she knew to keep her head on straight and do this the smart way. Duels might be her specialty, but after all her time with the Seekers, Nadia could tag team with the best of them. She skirted around the edges of the battlefield, neither too close nor too far from the action, to irritate D with shots from her newly-recovered handguns until Geralt or Roland created an opportunity. Then she pounced, leaping into to apply extra pressure or land follow-up attacks for her friends. Her speed and aerial mobility could get her to D reliably, provided he wasn’t casting magic. Her team needed to be careful about being too passive or spending too much time on D’s minions, since the vampiric Consul tended to unleash his magic the moment he got any space.

Fireballs flew, flame pillars erupted, blood rained down, and meteors scorched the earth. Of course, he was no slouch in close quarters either. His challengers quickly found that his scythe was no joke. It could fend off the heavy blade of Geralt’s cleaver, and even turn away Roland’s expert sword strikes despite its ungainly heft. Their clashes, however, brought the Fixer to his Zenith, and as he gained Powder of Life, the sorcerer Consul scowled. “A ward…? How irritating.” He then snorted, his eyes narrowed. “But if that’s as high as you can rise, you’ll find I can fell you as many times as needed!” From his cape he conjured a verminous wave of black rats, and the fight continued.

If one thing could be considered constant about the battle against the Gravemind and its accompanying Consuls, it was the noise, amplified by the almost amphitheater-like shape of the arena within the Final Hollow. The roar of flames, the chorus of undead voices that railed and rebuked, the visceral sounds of organs and limbs as they were made and unmade, the thunderous report of various firearms, the furious clashes of instruments of destruction against shields, armor, and hateful flesh, the frenzied utterances of O’s animals and the metallic screeching of his machines, the voices of the heroes raised in effort, or callout–it all made for quite the din. Tensions were running high, and not just for those traumatized by A’s stresscasting. Any Seeker not hindered by severe tunnel vision could see that their numbers were starting to dwindle.

Through the chaotic clamor, however, there came a ray of hope. Bright blue sigils of holy light appeared by the heads of everyone within Sandalphon’s network, whether actively engaged in battle or momentarily standing back. The archangel’s familiar and welcome voice, deadpan as ever, helped to center and soothe them in the midst of their turmoil, as if even this utilitarian miracle possessed curative properties. “Attention, everyone. I’ll keep this brief. Sectonia and Edward are well, but unable to continue fighting. We have ascertained D’s weakness: light, incantations, and miracles. Pit has also flushed out O’s real body. The team fighting A is experiencing abnormal stress that cannot be allowed to escalate further. In light of this bulletin, please reallocate personnel with all haste. And call me if needed.”

With that, Sandalphon allowed her sigils to dissipate and returned to her silent vigil in the Avenger’s Comm Center, her unblinking eyes fixed on the light screen in front of her. Though Edward and Sectonia were ultimately fine, which she’d confirmed personally via External Information Network when they arrived, the fact that they’d invoked Palico Rescue in the first place was worrying. According to what Ace said, only one more person could expect such salvation. Then the Seekers would start sustaining casualties for real. Sandalphon drummed her fingers on her arm restlessly. Though part of her wanted to stay in the Final Hollow after Pit summoned her and do whatever she could to help, the archangel had managed to be rational about what she could and couldn’t do. Her own fatigue aside, her miracles and especially her shapeshifting needed time to build up via damage. All her expenditure during the Lilith fight meant that she’d bring almost nothing to the table if she did warp in. Better to do her real job and coordinate things from afar to get the Seekers functioning like a team.

After a sharp inward breath, Sandalphon lifted her mic to her lips and reached out again, this time targeting specific Seekers. “Blazermate: Goldlewis, Ganondorf, Falcon, and Ace need medical attention. Midna, Ace, Primrose, Ms Fortune, relieve those fighting A as soon as possible. Pit, your new target is D.” Though the young angel was no doubt eager to make up for his slip-up against O, he did not need to be any more emotionally charged, and his abilities would be better used against D. “Junior, Rika, your target is now in the structure behind you. Juri…” Sandalphon could see the martial artist already peeling away from the D fight to speed toward O’s new base. Whatever the archangel was going to say, she thought better of it. “Play well.”

Sandalphon switched off her mic, then breathed deep. Nineteen Seekers remained on the field. Grimm, Zenkichi, and Edelgard still opposed the Gravemind, while Roxas and Geralt would hold down the fort against D as the four against A rotated out. She suspected that Captain Falcon and Therion would naturally gravitate toward D alongside Pit, while Ganondorf and Goldlewis joined the others against the Gravemind. That left just Juri, Junior, and Rika to hunt down O, and Blazermate on general support. Sandalphon believed that this was a good breakdown, but against foes like these nothing was for certain.

Down in the thick of it, some things were easier said than done. For a few moments, the fight against D seemed to favor the five Seekers. They could attack in quick succession, and from a variety of angles. When tipped off about O, though, Juri up and left, and D quickly started to find his footing. He gave Geralt and Roxas a murderous stare, incensed by their taunts. “I am nobody’s prey. Wield light against me, and you’ll soon see the folly in your selfsure provocations.” D threw up his off hand to cast Dominus Hatred, and as his opponents’ eyes turned skyward to trace the green ray’s path, he made a move of his own.

He hurled his scythe at Roland as a blazing wheel that the Fixer clashed with, the air filled with the clangs of steel against steel. Roland won out and sent the scythe flipping into the air, only for D to teleport up, seize the scythe, then drop on him with a meteoric guillotine impact. When the Hateful Flesh soared in D sidestepped it, then hooked the cleaver with his scythe. He yanked the blade down into the ground, planted his foot on it to keep it in place, then severed its connective tendon. “Knife knowin’ ya!” Nadia arrived the next second, ready to sink Athame into D’s unprotected back, only to get jabbed in the gut by the butt of D’s scythe. The counterhit made her stumble, and D whirled around with a horizontal slice. Nadia hadn’t stopped believing, though, and she stopped the Consul short with her extended knee to finally land her Blue Monday counter. “Hah! Don’t ‘count’ me out!” She grabbed D, hoisted him off his feet, and threw him over her shoulder to the ground. When she went to elbow drop him, however, he transformed into mist and streamed away, meaning the feral’s elbow hit the ground instead. “Yowch!” Grimacing, Nadia got up just in time to crouch-block another wave of rats, which pushed the four Seekers back to neutral.

Beep, boop, beep. Sombra’s hacking skills made quick work of the antiquated firewall pre-installed in the doors at the base of O’s Command Center. With the lockdown lifted, Juri could waltz right inside, taking the chance to cast an impatient side-eye glance back at Junior and Rika as they hustled over from the ruined Polar Bear exhibit. As they rushed toward the Command Center, however, O himself stepped in to impede them. “Little brats!” His voice resounded from the pair of disembodied red eyes descending toward them. “My poor bears…don’t you know they’re endangered!?” Angry that they’d survived so long, and more than a little rattled by his own close shave, O got down to business. First, he created the Scorpions around them, trapping them inside a desert-themed arena where giant mechanical arachnids played the role of highly-overtuned bumper cards. Then he constructed a Drop in the Ocean ride on top of it, putting a pit of freezing water right in front of his Command Center. Once built, the crane immediately went haywire, swinging around its submersible pod like a wrecking ball. “I’ll just have to endanger you, too!”

With all that chaos outside, Juri could be forgiven for rolling her eyes, hacking into the elevator, and riding up to the top floor all on her lonesome. The moment she arrived, though, she found herself greeted by an unexpected sight inside the futuristic dome: a miniature tropical rainforest, surrounded by tall electric fences, with no sign of O anywhere. Instead she spotted an animal she hadn’t bargained for: a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a sixteen-foot monstrosity of cruel claws, massive fangs, olive-green scales, and primeval ferocity.

By now, the Gravemind was definitely suffering from all the Seekers’ attention. After Sectonia parted one of its tentacles, her allies picked up her mantle, starting with Zenkichi and Midna. The detective struck first to take a big bite out of one tentacle with One-shot Kill, leading to the deployment of Floodfested reinforcements. After the Twilight Princess turned the tables on an eximus-led Mutalist raid, she used the frosty Osprey and her Beast Legion to pull off a high-flying stunt with the Dead End Express. Thanks to the extra wind power, its absurd cutting ability was more than enough to sever the tentacle and leave the Gravemind at two. Ace wasn't quite as lucky when he went for a third and took some punishment in the Gravemind's grasp, but he'd still done a lot of damage. Add to that Primrose’s magic and Edelgard’s unrelenting offense, and the Guardian was hurting.

Once Primrose kindled his flame, Grimm took center stage. He first stretched the strands of his cape into the ground, adding insult to injury after the dancer’s splendid Moonlight Waltz with a bed of spikes from below. Of course, it was a fine line between the Qliphoth ended and the Gravemind began, so most of his spikes popped out of the flesh heap itself. After that, Grimm around between the mob of Floodfested being demolished by Zenkichi and leaped above the fray to put the Peacock Strut to good use. He hung in the air like a paper lantern, then belted out a torrent of scarlet fireballs that fell upon the Gravemind like rain.

The Guardian did not like all this one bit. Having realized that its current strategy wasn’t working very well, and having lost a great deal of biomass in the process, it set about making a change. A cacophony of rumbling and snapping resounded through the hollow as it retracted its remaining limbs and began to consolidate its bulk. Extraneous tissues were broken down and emitted as toxic gasses that shrouded the Gravemind’s body as it transformed. ”KILL ME? A RIDICULOUS NOTION. YOU MIGHT AS WELL TRY TO KILL THE EARTH, THE SKY, THE STARS. THE UNIVERSE IS, AND WE ARE!” It became stronger, denser, less a sprawling heap and more a reinforced pillar. Then the upper and lower parts of the Gravemind both violently split into three, and a ambulatory colossus was born. With three enormous heads, one wielding a gruesome infested scythe, the Gravemind declared itself anew. ”I AM A MONUMENT TO ALL YOUR SINS!” It reared up, then slammed two of its newly-formed legs against the ground to unleash a knockdown-inducing shockwave.

Those tremors helped drive Ace, pushed back by the toxic miasma, even further away. With Blazermate only able to heal one person at a time, and the rest of her prospective patients grouped up, the hunter had yet to be healed, which meant that he couldn’t risk racking up environmental damage. With all the magic flying around thanks to Consuls and Seekers alike, Ace was more than a little queasy, and not fully cognizant of his surroundings. The Gravemind’s transformation had disturbed the other fights nearby, the brawl against Consul D most of all. Still under attack by Roland, Roxas, Geralt, and Nadia, D used the distraction to veil himself in another bat tornado, then charge an unknown spell. By the time his opponents realized he was up to something, it was too late to stop him. “Demonic…” the Consul called, surrounded by dark magic. “Meggido!”

A huge explosion of collapsing stars amidst pitch-black magic went off at his position, big enough to threaten not just his opponents, but the Gravemind’s as well. Even if blocked it would still chip off a third of its victims’ life, but those unprepared for it -like Ace- had only one saving grace: Roland’s Powder of Life. In the wake of D’s destructive blast, Ace found himself partially restored, but only for a moment. Seeing the hunter separated from his allies, D rushed to make an example of him, and despite the health granted by Powder of Life Ace still happened to be below the Death Scythe’s threshold. With a single lunging slash, the monster hunter fell.

“ACE!” Nadia wailed, running forward with one arm extended. Instead of the ground, however, her companion plopped down on a cart manned by a crew of phantom palicos, much to D’s stunned bemusement. The felynes disappeared with their cargo the next moment, leaving Nadia with flattened ears and reddening cheeks. “Oh, uh, yeah. Right. Ahem…” After clearing her throat, she turned her nasty grin on D, her grip tight around the handle of Athame. Forget Sandalphon’s orders–Nadia wasn’t going anywhere now. “Alright, D-lister. You’ve officially raised my vamp-ire. Better say your purr-ayers, ‘cause this is gonna hurt a clawful lot!”

D spun his scythe in his hands and planted its butt in the ground. “Enough talk!” He warped forward, weapon raised for a scything blow. “Have at you!”

On the arena’s right side, A didn’t stay down for long. He saw how the fights were going against O and D, as well as the state of the Gravemind, and made his choice. Though vulnerable to attack for a few moments, his core quickly began to accelerate, glowing bright and brighter to the sound of a rapidly beating heart. Finally, the Consul’s body melted away in a burst of virulent purple light, and Moebius A came to be. It stood before them, easily twelve feet tall, a being somewhere between mechanical monstrosity and ancient abomination, an armored biped of demonic aspect adorned with bulbous black eyes, a spiky crown, and a heart-shaped protrusion on his back.

”Behold, the heart of this World of Light!” Moebius A proclaimed, its arms held wide in welcome embrace. ”Father and mother, alpha and omega! Moebius, incarnate! And you…” On one side of its face, a cluster of three black pearls bulged, while on the other a single red eye peered down. A glowing crimson lemniscate shone within it. ”You still don’t know what you’re up against. You are but figments, who flatter and delude yourselves. Can the nail go against the finger? The finger, against the hand? You are born of Moebius, same as I!” It lifted its arms up, claws turned toward the outside. The Gravemind obeyed, pulling its terrible puppet strings, and the demon tree infested by its flesh bent to its will. A dreadful crackling and groaning filled the Qliphoth as the ceiling far above the arena began to tear. When A drew his arms apart, as if ripping into some cosmic corpse, the canopy of the Qliphoth split apart. Fragments of twisted, fleshy wood rained down but not timefall, for the Qliphoth towered above over the clouds. Instead the Seekers could see the pale blue sky, and above that the moon, pitted and scarred in a fundamentally unwholesome manner.

”Behold, the body,” A pronounced, drawing its clawed hands downward. ”Of which the Gravemind is but the head. Behold, the infinite malignity of the stars!”

Far above the Qliphoth, the sky appeared to warp, distort, and darken. Horror gnawed at the frayed edges of the Seekers’ sanity as the day seemed to turn to night, and yet the moon still shone, aglow with some inner radiance. Then, in a scene conjured from feverish nightmare, the moon burst from its celestial eggshell, and slowly stretched out its execrable limbs to smite the battlefield below.

Three cycles until the Brother Moon’s impact

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

Dead Zone Hinterlands - Martira, Old Castle Town

Harry’s @Eviledd1984

Far from the parasitized demon tree and its smorgasbord of horrors, where the Seekers of Light struggled against an amalgamate alien mass and three of the Endless Now’s despotic architects, a sleepy little town lay in among the foothills of the borderline mountain range. To the southwest lay arid, rocky scrublands, a lawless wilderness ruled by racers, biker gangs and motor-clans, a place of asphalt, gasoline, and sandworms. To the west Curien Mansion peered down, opulent and imperial, from its mountainous, pine-shrouded perch above the moor. And to the northwest lay the muddy, mossy wastes pounded by perpetual timefall, its solitary tower safeguarded by the wandering spirits of the damned.

For a long time the people of that lonesome hamlet had cowered in the shadow of the not-so-distant necropolis known as Redgraccoon City, home to unspeakable nightmares that could at any moment march forth in their thousands and bring doom to the old castle town. A good night’s sleep was a rare treasure in a town where disappearances were woefully commonplace, and just about anything could go bump in the night. That all changed, however, when one fateful night the necropolis disappeared in a blaze of ungodly light, reduced to the rainy, tar-covered crater that it is today.

In the weeks since then, some semblance of normalcy had crept back into the lives of the townsfolk–a testament to the residents’ tenacious will to live. Though muted in color, strings of pennants flutter in the wind over the varied market stalls and visiting merchant caravans of the town’s fountain plaza, ringed by ivy-walled townhouses, and aged stone fortifications. Most of Martira branched out from that hub, including Cattleracket Road, where children advertized their insects and seeds over the sounds of cows and sheep, and locals clamored for the honey of Dudbear beekeepers. Those in need of healing would need to disregard the worrisome rumors, make their way to Blind Well Alley, and choose between Iosefka’s Clinic or the Kissers of Wounds who dwelled in Order of the True Shrine Church. The town’s best-known establishments, meanwhile, could be found back at the plaza, like the ice cream parlor Dimwit & Duke’s, Sanza’s Map Emporium, and the Friendly Arm, the inn that cornered Martira’s market. Crossing the bridge over the neighboring ravine -where the daring could tempt fate by bungee jumping- would take one up the long, winding path up the mountainside, surrounded on both sides by humble homes and shops of all kinds, until one finally reached Indels Castle, where the governess of Martira, Lady Johanna, dwelt with her aides.

Not all was well in the wake of Redgraccoon City’s obliteration, though. The townsfolk still look over their shoulders, and the guards clutch tightly at their partizans as they patrol the worn-down ramparts. Though sandworms do threaten parties dispatched to the Paved Wilderness to collect the local delicacies -sandworm larvae and cheese from Cheese Land- it’s the disturbing continuation of disappearances that keep the people on edge. Children continue to disappear overnight, and the militia -led by the formidable and well-meaning but maladroit Roussainte, Bardon- seems powerless to stop it. All signs point to Heismay, the reclusive and disgraced former knight said to inhabit the abandoned Curien Mansion, but without enough men to mount expeditions to that cursed place, Bardon and Johanna have looked beyond Martira’s borders for anyone able to bring this crisis to an end.

World of Light: the Endless Now (The Ultimate Smash Bros Crossover)

@Lugubrious

Okay where would be a good zone to place Harry while the others are fighting the Gravemind? He could for the time being get his bearings and try to figure out what is going on. And sure can you DM me the discord server link thanks.

@Eviledd1984

We'll talk about it! Until he's freed from Galeem, he'll be acting as he normally would and unable to register what's wrong with this reality. Since there's probably going to be a quick break after the fight before we start the next mission, we can spitball ideas about a neutral area that suits Harry that we can visit in the interim. Maybe solve a little mystery.